1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of vehicle window shades, and in particular to an improved automobile windshield shade arrangement. The inventive concepts can equally apply to any vehicle windshield, rear window, and/or side window.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Automobile sun shade arrangements are well known in the art. Such shades protect the interior of the automobile from damaging sun rays and block the view to the interior from the front of the automobile to discourage theft. A common, inexpensive, but unpopular shade comprises a portable foldable or collapsible cardboard or cloth device which must be manipulated, often with great difficulty, to a manageable size for storage. Even in the completely collapsed state, however, the size is generally too large to store in the glove compartment or other convenient and concealed location within the automobile.
Attempts to solve these problems have been offered but without success or acceptance by the purchasing public. Some examples of prior art efforts follow.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,575,524 to Cronk shows a simple arrangement in which a shade is wound onto a winding core, the wound shade being housed between a rigid window frame of the automobile and a cover. The cover has a slot in it through which the shade is manually pulled horizontally across the inside of the windshield and fastened at the opposite side of the windshield.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,560,668 to Li uses a vertically moveable shade, the roller for the shade being mounted horizontally along the top of the windshield on the inside of the automobile. A pair of gapped pipes disposed on left and right sides of the windshield receive sliders coupled to a horizontal moving rod to which the bottom of the shade is attached. Moving the movable rod up and down moves the sliders within the gapped pipes which serves to raise and lower the shade.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,443,923 to Laniado et al. is another sun shade adapted for attachment across a vehicle surface for protecting the interior of the vehicle against sun rays, the shade having a vertical roller. The shade is pulled off of the wound vertical roller to extend horizontally across the inside of the windshield and connect to the opposite side.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,404,926 to Ojima et al. teaches a roller shade having a spring-loaded retractor about which a sun shade is rolled. And a power drive unit is employed to raise and lower a horizontal rod to which the free end of the shade is attached, the power drive unit working against the spring force of the retractor. In one embodiment, the drive unit is placed below the center of the windshield, and a system of pulleys raises and lowers the shade, again from a shade retractor disposed along the lower edge of the windshield. In such a device, the stress on the shade increases as the shade is extended, leading to damage or unsightly wrinkling of the shade.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,979,775 to Klose discloses a window shade wrapped about a winding shaft at the top of the windshield. The free end of the shade is attached to an axially displaceable shaft, the shaft moving up and down to retract and extend the shade.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,932,711 to Goebel shows an automobile windshield shade having a tubular base attached to the dash of an automobile, and the bottom of an accordion pleated shade is attached to the base. A batten is used to hook the shade to the top of the windshield. Tension means at the base pulls the strings down to collapse the pleated fabric.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,869,542 to Lin is another example of a sun visor for an automobile in which a shade is rolled on a retractor at the base of the window, and the shade is manually pulled upwardly to hook at the top of the window in the extended position of the shade.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,762,358 teaches the use of a plurality of shade retractors mounted along the top of a windshield of an automobile and manually extendable to hook to a fastener on the bottom of the windshield.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,758,041 to Labeur shows a glare protection device for the rear window of a passenger car in which the shade is unrolled from a roll bar by means of a ball and screw arrangement. Rotating the screw in one direction raises the shade against the spring bias of the roll bar, and rotating the screw in the opposite direction lowers the ball and the shade coupled thereto.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,335,773 to Masi is another example of a sun curtain rolled on a retractor mounted at the bottom of a window and manually raised to hook on a fastener at the top of the window.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,261,411 to Dieterich is another example of a sun shade having a bottom roller or retractor about which a shade is rolled, the free end of the shade being manually connected to the top of the window. The sun shade of Dieterich is designed for the sloping rear windows of a hatchback car and has slots in it so that the person in the vehicle may have a degree of sun shade protection and yet have a view to the rear through the shade.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,183,033 to Stulbach shows yet another example of a shade retractor mounted at the bottom of a window of a vehicle and which is manually raised against the spring action of the retractor and hooked to the fasteners at the top of the window.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,156,294 to Miller et al. is directed to a spring-loaded hold-down device for keeping Venetian blinds from whipping around in the wind and banging against the window frame when the window is open.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,547,373 to Camp teaches a self-contained rising shade in which the rolled shade is disposed at the bottom of the automobile window, and the extended portion has a handle at its center which may be manually raised to be supported by a pair of resilient bands on each side of the shade member.
U.S. Pat. No. 928,864 to Hoyt discloses a spring-actuated shade having a weighted shade bar at the lower end adapted to frictionally engage the walls of guide ways, the shade bar being automatically returned to a horizontal position after being inadvertently tilted.
U.S. Pat. No. DES 339,098 to Cooper appears to be another version of an automobile sun shade which is wound on a roller at the bottom of the windshield and is manually extendible upwardly to be hooked to the top of the windshield.
With this prior art as background, it will be appreciated that improvements in the prior art devices are needed. In particular, all of the window shade arrangements which employ a spring-loaded retractor place the shade in tension, and as with the common window shade arrangement, this can cause unsightly bowing and wrinkling, since the rising bar is not necessarily always coupled to the sunshade precisely with the same tension at all points along the edge of the sun shade.
Additionally, although some of the prior art devices employ a casing with a gap through which the sun shade is pulled for extension, nevertheless, the retractor unit and other operating members of the assembly are visible and detract from the beauty of the interior of the automobile. The aforementioned patent to Cronk combines a window shading device and a rigid window frame of a motor vehicle windshield, but there is no attempt to cover the slotted opening in the winding core cover. Moreover, the pull tab at the free end of the shade must be always accessible, since the tab is to be manually pulled to the opposite side of the windshield for fastening.
The present invention avoids the aforementioned failings of the prior art, solves the problems associated with prior art devices, and provides other additional improvements over the basic vehicle sunshade arrangement.